NHL ‘in a better place’ with NHLPA, IIHF relationship

The NHL is participating in the Olympics for the first time since 2014.

The League made a business decision not to attend the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, and concerns about the pandemic’s impact on the NHL and its business led the League to back out of attending the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

The fact that the League is represented here in Milan is a testament to the collaboration it and the NHLPA have with the IIHF with Tardif touting two years of meetings and planning to make it a reality.

“We didn’t have the best players in the world since Sochi and it was time to find a solution because all of us in our different organizations, we want to grow the game,” Tardif said. “So, it was important to bring all the players to the best competition. … It was two years of discussion but yesterday when we saw the tournament start, everybody smiling, the players also, it means we did our job.”

A key to making it happen was increased flexibility on the part of the International Olympic Committee, Commissioner Bettman said.

The NHL and NHLPA have been given more leeway and access at this Olympics than it had at previous Olympics it jointly attended in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014. It has allowed for more content and promotion to come out of the Olympics both from the NHL and the players themselves, including on their social media channels.

“Players are allowed to create content as participants; we’re allowed to retweet it,” Commissioner Bettman said. “In some respects, we have better access than we did before. There’s been some cooperation in terms of joint logo use. It will continue to evolve over time as the IOC continues to recognize as it relates to the Winter Olympics in terms of sheer mass, there’s nothing that compares to the hockey. There has been an evolution over time. … I think over time we will continue to evolve.”